Monday, May 03, 2010

Color Images of Vaticanus Marginalia

In the beginning of this year I posted a long series of responses by Philip Payne to an SBL paper by Peter Head. The response was also posted in a PDF-version on TC Files in the right sidebar (accessed 156 times so far). As a result of the on-going discussion Phil Payne revised this response a number of times which, I suppose, has both advantages and disadvantages. In any case, Payne has recently produced and sent me yet another version, which I think may be useful because in it:

1) Payne provides high resolution color images of Vaticanus marginalia in relation to the various issues that are raised in the discussion;

2) He has made the paper focus somewhat more on the phenomena in Vaticanus and somewhat less on Peter Head's paper.

He has also added interline space in the text so that it is much easier to read.

The new version can be downloaded here and on TC Files in the right sidebar.

10 comments
:

Tommy, Thanks for this. Can you alert me when the final version is published on our website? Or is the continual up-dating a kind of enacted-parable about the dot-pairy-things? By the way my good friend. You live in beautiful Sweden; not very far from England. Surely you should prefer the accurate spelling: "colour".

my energy for the debate is low either way, and I think it would be fairly easy to sell me on "distigmai" (if I have remembered it correctly). Over all, though, I think if I had to chose one I would go with "umlaut", if for no other reason than when you say "umlaut" everyone will immediately know what the mark looks like, whereas if you say "distigmai" it will be clear only to a few (a few who already knew what they looked like from back in the days when they were called "umlauts"...).

I can understand the argument against "unlaut": speakers of languages that have real unlauts, such as German, objecting that while the vaticanus marks may resemble an umlaut in form they differ in function. I think though that may be confusing function with ontology. A screwdriver, for example, is made and intended for the function of driving screws; if I use it to pry open a paint can, does it suddenly cease to be a screwdriver and become a distigmai instead? perhaps we'll never know.

To be honest I have been very ambivalent about all these versions that has been sent to me. This last one was sent two weeks ago and has been in my mailbox where I forgot it. However, I thought that there were some advantages with this version, mainly because it includes image evidence.

Anyway, as we all have noticed these documents are not like stable publications. So the "final version" that you asked for I hope will be published in print somewhere (as I hope will your response).

Incidentally, I am fine with Brits and their commonwealth lackeys spelling colo(u)r with the u. I only ask that they pronounce the word as they choose to spell it. Perhaps, a superior phonetic British spelling would be "culah." E.g. British "Whah culah is your cah?"American "What color is your car?"